Farmer's helping each other out.

We were just told recently that the Downtown Binghamton Farmer's market is extending an invitation out to all farmer's who markets were affected by the flood and they aren't able to go to come to Downtown Binghamton's Market. This is a thoughtful gesture. Many farms were not just affected by the flood on their own farm limiting what they have to sell but the market that they normally sold at has been cancelled until further notice or shut down all together for the season.

I know for us we did not get flooded on the farm, but we did not have Otsiningo Market last weekend and we are not sure if we will be having it this weekend. As farmers that is basically our only source of income is markets. Lucky for us we go to Ithaca Market which was not affected by the flood that much. I cannot even imagine the farmers that have lost their markets and have no where to sell their product. That is if they still have product to sell and didn't loose everything in the flood.

Updates are coming in slowly and we should know by Thursday whether we will have Otsiningo Market or not this weekend. As soon as we receive news on it I will post it here and our facebook page as soon as possible. And unfourtunately we do not have much to sell here at the stand at the house. A lot of our tomatoes were split and ruined by the rain. We have quite a few green ones still that we are waiting to turn red. We have salvaged some second tomatoes as well. And we will always be able to get some fruit from Cornell so if anyone is interested in second tomatoes or fruit from Cornell and would like to place an order we will gladly see what we can do. We also still have lots of eggs. Being that we didn't have market last weekend we have quite a few. If you are in the need for eggs please don't hesitate to stop or call the house to get some. You can email me as well. crosscreekfarmfamily@yahoo.com

I wish you all the best of luck and hope that you are recovering well. If anyone needs some help please let us know.

Picking up the pieces

Now that the flood waters have kind of subsided, things are starting to slowly work their way to normal. Even though we did not get flooded it has affected us as far as where to get food, gas and that type of stuff.  But we are starting this week off with a "bang."

Because of the rain we have quite a few tomatoes that we have to go through to see what we can salvage. We are going to try to get some boxes of second tomatoes together for sale. If you are interested please let us know. Either via email crosscreekfarmfamily@yahoo.com or facebook.  We are also going to be getting a load of peaches and things in this week. It is getting towards the end of market season so if you want your fresh fruit for canning, storing, or eating, you need to let us know a head of time if you want a large quantity.

We had our last batch of baby chicks for the season arrive the day the flood started. We have 300 little chicks running around! Our next batch to be butchered is going to be in about 2 weeks. We will have chicken again at that point.

Rabbits, we have quite a few that are going to be processed this week. If you want to stock your freezer, now is the time to do it.

Please remember we always accept pre-orders for market as well. Just make sure your order is in by friday night at 8 pm. Then you need to pick up your order by noon at market or else it goes back up for sale!

Flooding, Devastation and Friends!

Aerial view of Owego.

As many of you know there has been a very devastating flood in and around our area. Appalachin, Binghamton, Candor, Catatonk, Conklin, Sidney, Whitney point, Castle Creek, Nichols and Owego all got flooded with water. It will be days, weeks and possibly months before all of this gets cleaned up and worked out. My heart goes out to all the people affected by the flood.

I am very grateful that we live on a hill. We did not have any damage or anything. Besides just rain. We took a drive through Candor and Catatonk area and stopped at Iron Kettle to check on our farmer friends. They only had a little bit of water and only lost some products nothing compared to some. We know that some of our farmer friends down in Windsor got flooded really bad as well. We were told that Binghamton Urban Farm also got flooded to the point that they will not have any fall crops. :( We are so sorry for you all!

I am sure some of you readers got it as well. This has been heartbreaking to say the least. But if there is anything that we can do please let us know and we will try to help out the best we can. We have a ton of eggs if people are looking for eggs. I know some grocery stores are out. We have some rabbit meat and some tomatoes if anyone needs some of that stuff.

This is Main St- Grocer store, drug store, insurance
company and gas station after water receded. The gas station
was flooded as well that is the parking lot I took the picture from.

The small town right near us (Newark Valley) had some flooding as well. It was like a river was running down Main St. The highschool was flooded and the only grocery store in town had water in it rumored 5 ft high. This is very sad and hard for a small community like ours that doesn't normally expect this type of disaster to recover from. There is only 2 gas stations in our town and 1 was completely flooded and the other was fine but I am sure will possibly be running out of gas soon. We can go to Ithaca or Cortland for food and groceries, some have traveled down to Hooper Rd I heard and the grocery store was open there but picked through pretty good.

Bank parking lot with auto shop after water receded.

Some people do not see the whole picture when it comes to this. Not only did it affect the people's homes that got flooded, but it will be awhile before the businesses recover and have the necessities that are needed. We stopped in Candor to get gas yesterday and saw a couple that was traveling and was filling gas cans because they were not sure when the next gas station that would be in operation was.

It breaks my heart to see some of the devastation on people's faces. The hurt the pain of losing everything. It is just something I can't describe.

We still have not heard a lot about Nichols and we have a farmer friend who lives there that last we had heard  was under 7 ft of water. We heard that  on Wednesday I believe and have not received any other news. We are concerned hoping they are ok.  The waters that are receding here right now are headed for that direction. I read a comment on Facebook that the news people put on stating that they cannot report on what they can not get to and at this time they can't get to Nichols to say what is going on. We praying for everyone in the devastation.

It is amazing however that we have not heard about deceased or majorly injured at this time. It is unbelievable that a disaster of this nature has not taken lives thus far. If it has and we have not heard about it I am truly sad and sorry for those families.

National Guard here to help.

I found some pictures through news and friends that I thought help show the devastation.They are just unbelieveable. We are praying for all and hope that things recover quickly!

RABBIT MEATLOAF

Yes you saw right, we had rabbit meatloaf last night for dinner. We had a few older rabbits that needed to be butchered so we kept them for ourselves and Dad ground them into rabbit burger. We were going to have burgers but then someone said rabbit meatloaf -or- rabloaf. Dad and mom also made some unfried (baked) rabbit pieces (loin and legs).

It was amazingly delicious and moist. Eric Jr devoured it asking for more numerous times. Julianna even enjoyed it.

I will have to say that it is not as cool as the Rabbit buffalo wing that a customer of ours made from our rabbit. And I wish he would make for me! Check it out on our facebook page. But this was very enjoyable and warming on a cold rainy day!

So my tasty Tuesday recipe is going to be Rabbit meatloaf.

RABBIT MEATLOAF

1lb ground rabbit meat
bread crumbs
1 egg
rosemary
garlic
onions
poultry seasoning
Homemade tomato sauce

Bake at 350 for 1 hour.

We also had freshly picked green beans from dad's pole bean plants! They were delicious. I absolutely love that we can eat everything pretty much from what we grow ourselves.

I still plan on making my own hasenpfeffer this winter. So hopefully you will see more recipes and posts like this about our rabbit.

Or even when our next batch of chickens and cornish hens are ready we will have a dinner of them and post that on here!

The Fruit is coming in!

This week at market, we had a wide spread of fruit. Cornell has had overwhelming fruit coming in. We had seedless grapes, peaches, prune plums, red and green pears, Gala apples, Sansa apples, Ginger gold apples and we know there is more coming this week!

We dropped off our first order of Cross Creek Herb shakers to Cornell Orchards. We have a wide variety of herbs there. This gives you the opportunity to not have to wait for market to be able to buy them. anytime you would like to buy them you can go to Cornell Orchards and pick them up!

We just ordered what will probably be our last batch of meat birds for the season. We ordered 150 of our normal Cornish Cross chickens and 150 of Cornish hens. We decided we would try raising some of the Cornish hens. We have had numerous people interested in them. So we figured why not add more of a diversity to our farm! So that means that the Cornish hens should be ready in October and the bigger ones should be ready by November. Just in time for our winter markets!


We will still be at Otsiningo Farmer's Market through the end of October. We are hoping to start indoor markets at that point and go from November straight through until markets start in the spring! Ithaca market runs through December! So don't forget us, keep coming to the markets and buying local. Just because fall and winter are approaching doesn't mean that you can't have local produce, meat, eggs and specialty goods.

We also will have apples for winter market. We have talked to Cornell and they are excited to supply us with apples throughout the season. Last year we didn't get our apples from them through the winter we tried buying a bin from someone else and keeping it and it didn't work out so well. So this year we have decided to get them from Cornell.

Long over due post.

Well hello! It has been awhile and I am really sorry. Things have been a little crazy here. Trying to keep up with weeds, kids, rabbits, herbs and produce. There are a lot of new and exciting things happening.

As you all know we have been trying to up our rabbit stock. We recently got 2 different sets of new additions. The first was a group that had been together for awhile. They had already been bred a few different times. We got 8 does and 3 bucks in
that group.







The second group was a group of 3. 2 does and 1 buck. They had belonged to an older couple and they had cages that they moved along the ground. Which comes to my next statement of we have finally started grazing our rabbits. The cages that move along the ground are called "tractors." It is kind of the same scenario as a "chicken tractor." We have had numerous questions and comments as to what a chicken tractor is. We have had every response from "a rabbit riding a tractor" to "a cage painted the color of a John Deere." Yes they sound silly, but to a non-farmer, some statements such as "chicken tractor" tend to get the mind wandering. That is what I love about farming, is there always something more to learn and something new coming out everyday in technology, ideas and products.

So after introducing them all to our rabbit "herd," we needed to revamp, reorganize and relabel. We are starting to fill up the barn. It looks pretty nice. It is very exciting for us because it is getting us closer and closer to our goal. Which means it also gets us closer to having as much rabbit available a week as demanded by our customers.

Julianna chillin while we pick herbs.

Eric Jr helping daddy with water bottles for the rabbits.

Of course in the mean time we get great pictures and teach our children how to farm. We are starting them young, but Eric Jr is loving it. At 2 years old he knows how to steer the tractor wherever it needs to go. He drives daddy to the barn and to feed the cows. He is excited every morning to wake up and go do chores. Now we know this will not last long, but we are taking advantage of it. It is great to see the absorption of knowledge in a little man like him. So hyper and full of energy and life, it amazes me at how much he loves to do this! He is our dirt boy. He walks out to the house and is completely covered in dirt. Sometimes I wonder where it comes from. And of course his sister is following right in his footsteps. She gets just as dirty and into everything that she can get her little hands on. She loves to follow her brother around and he loves to entertain her.

She was making sure we did it right!

Next topic is herbs. We have been revamping our dried herb line throughout the years. We first started in putting our dried herbs in plastic bags. Then we discovered that they sold better in shaker bottles. So we tested that out for a season and now have tried to completely revamp everything into those shaker bottles and find new and exciting combinations and herbs to place in them. We just recently got an account with Cornell Orchards. Which if you have purchased fruit from us before you would know that we generally get 90% of our fruit from them. Including the absolutely loved donut peaches! So if you are in need of our dried herb shakers and cannot get to market or there isn't a market before you absolutely need it, you can go to Cornell Orchards to get it!

Eric Jr helping me put the Lime Basil in the box.

She loved the color, or was it the taste?

The herbal teas and salves that I have been talking about are being put on the back burner for now in order for us to catch up and produce the amount of herb shakers we need to fill our orders. Ideas are still running through my head as to what mixes to make and herbal teas would be good for soothing, cooling and overall well being. I am still continually researching and learning about the properties of every herb. The cautions and the reasons behind the salves, teas and mixtures.

The rest has been a little mumbo jumbo. The stand is now being filled with fruit, and produce. We have tons of tomatoes coming on! The heirlooms look gorgeous! And taste even better! Peaches have been in. We are getting peaches from Cornell Orchards. Our first batch was Starfire.

We also got apples last week from Cornell Orchards. I cannot believe it is apple season already. This summer has flown. I think it was because spring took forever to get here, or maybe because we have been so busy I haven't had time to figure out what day of the week it is.

Herbs

Herbs

And more herbs.

Mom and Dad pickin tomatoes.
She got the first tomato this year!  I will get it next year though!
Hehehe!!!!

  Well, I won't keep you any longer, I am hoping to get back in the routine and writing. But for now I hope you enjoy the photos and the update.

Busy, Busy, Busy

I am writing this post at 11:45 pm because this is about the only time that I have a clear mind with no children crying, no phones ringing, no commotion. It is just me, the fans and silence. Ahhhhh......

So on to the subject at hand.

Things are hopping on the farm. Rabbits are ready for butcher. We have 20 Rabbits ready to be bred this week. Which means we should have quite a few right behind this batch.

We are revamping the stand, clearing the plants and bringing in the produce! We currently have had plums, tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, costata romanesca zucchini, Garlic (Italian red, Carpathian, and Music).

We have had more fruit and produce at Otsinigo market.

The fruit from Cornell has started coming in. We had the Shiro plums, now we have Shiro plums and Methley plums. When we talked to Cornell Orchards last week they said that we would probably have Donut peaches, and the beginning of the NY Peaches for the next Otsinigo Market.

By the way, Otsiningo Marketers remember that there is no Otsiningo Market this weekend because of Spiedie Fest. But we will return the weekend after that.

For Ithaca Marketers, we are starting to have a steady flow of rabbits. We also are waiting for the tomatoes to turn red, they are so close. As soon as they start turning red they are flowing towards market!

Our herb bunches are starting. Last weekend we took Basil, Lemon Basil and Sage to Otsiningo Market. And we took Basil and Purple Basil to Ithaca market. This week we should have all of that at Ithaca market and possibly a few more. Tarragon is looking nice so we will possibly be having some bunches of those this weekend.

I just got done hanging 64 bunches of herbs (Basil, purple basil, tarragon, mint, sage, lemon basil and  lime basil). I de-stemmed the marjoram that was already dry and put it in it's storage containers. I will be grinding some tarragon and stevia hopefully tomorrow. Then I will start putting in containers and getting them packaged to sell.

I have been making some teas and making the family taste test them so I can figure out what we should make.

I made a Lemongrass and Stevia tea which Mom K, Eric and my mom liked. They all said it could use more stevia though.

I made a Lemongrass, Rosemary and Thyme tea which was very strong. I liked it. Mom K. said the rosemary was too strong, Dad said the rosemary was too weak. Eric was indifferent on it and my mom really didn't like it at all.

Dad also tried the lemonbalm tea bag that I made up and the Calendula tea bag. He said that the Lemonbalm was not strong enough and that the Calendula was not strong enough. He is a strong tea drinker. He uses 2 tea bags when someone would normally use 1. So I knew he would say they were weak.

For me the Calendula I thought tasted great. It was weak and I said that I needed to make sure that I put more in there. The lemonbalm was just right for me. The Lemongrass/Stevia was very strong for me. The Lemongrass/Rosemary/Thyme tea was delicious. I did think that the Rosemary or the Thyme was too strong and I needed to do a little less because you couldn't really taste the lemongrass in it. So I am going to play with those a little more.

I had planned on taking some Iced tea to market last weekend but my concotions did not turn out the way I had hoped. Hopefully by the next market we will be able to have something.

Obviously field maintenance is a must right now. Eric is planning on getting into the field to get between the rows tomorrow. We are also moving rabbit cages down by the barn for the rabbits we still have outside.

There is a lot to do herb wise and I am not sure where to start at this moment. I am going Wednesday to buy some muslin so that I can start making the herbal pillows. I am very excited to start doing those. Any input would be greatly appreciated on those.

I am trying to get the dried herbs packaged and ready to go because Iron Kettle Farm and Stoughton's Farm have both agreed to carry our herbs. And their busy season is coming right up. I want to make sure we have them there before they start to get busy.  Marlo from Garden Gate is also going to be taking our dried herbs as soon as I have them ready.

So tomorrow I will be spending the day, grinding, packaging, printing labels and labeling. Hopefully to get some stock piled for sale. The herbs are coming in great so hopefully I can keep up.

There are probably many other things to write about, but it is 12:10 pm and I am going to go to bed. Lots to do tomorrow....need my beauty sleep : )